


The Dancer's Prayer

by AlexIsOkay



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27441202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexIsOkay/pseuds/AlexIsOkay
Summary: Ophilia reads scripture to Primrose by the light of the campfire.
Relationships: Primrose Azelhart/Ophilia Clement
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	The Dancer's Prayer

It was dark on the plains of Atlasdam, the stars covered by a thin layer of clouds and the moon at the valley of its cycle, hardly even visible now. The only true source of light for miles came from the small fire burning away, casting an orange glow over the modest campsite set up around it. For the most part the camp was quiet, and the adventurers who had set it up were sleeping. But sitting on the ground closest to the flames, still awake even at this late hour of the night, Ophilia and Primrose remained.

“ _And though he traveled through the Frostlands for two days and two nights, and wind and snow battered his skin and arrested his travels, and though the fire in his lantern dwindled and weakened, it never faltered, for the Spirits of the Sacred Flame kept it alight, and offered him providence in his journey until he should set foot in Flamesgrace once more._ ” Ophilia wasn’t reciting those words from memory, though by this point in her life she most likely could have. Instead she had a large, heavy text laid out across her lap, one she insisted on bringing with her in her travels no matter how cumbersome it might have been to carry. She had been reading from it for a while now- for long enough that she and Primrose had both lost track of precisely how long had actually passed.

It had started when Ophilia had taken the book out, as she always did before readying herself to sleep, so that she could read a few passages of scripture. It was a standard part of her nightly routine and, typically, a private one. Ophilia normally sat off by herself near the fire, reading in silence while the others talked amongst themselves for a few minutes or readied themselves for sleep as well. Ophilia had done this for as many nights as their group had been traveling together, and never once had anyone else sought to disturb her. She had seemed surprised, then, when Primrose had come over and sat next to her, asking if it would be alright if she read over Ophilia’s shoulder.

Primrose had been hoping the request wouldn’t come as an intrusion, though really, she should have known that such a thing could never be the case. Ophilia was the daughter of the Archbishop of the Order of the Flame, after all, and as such it only seemed fitting that she would gladly bend the ear of all who were willing to listen. In her excitement Ophilia had even offered to read aloud, perhaps swept up in nostalgia for the services and sermons she had left behind when she had departed from Flamesgrace, and Primrose had been perfectly content to accept that offer, settling in alongside Ophilia as Ophilia began to read.

They must have been there for over an hour at this point, Primrose listening intently while Ophilia regaled her with the history and the stories and the legends of the Order of the Flame, sometimes reading what was written verbatim, other times interjecting with her own little explanations and anecdotes. She had kept her voice low, of course, so as to not disturb the others who were sleeping at the far end of the camp, though even then her voice was filled with an endearing enthusiasm in every word she spoke. And Primrose, all the while, had listened quietly beside her, speaking up occasionally to ask questions about certain things that caught her interest, but otherwise remaining silent.

Certainly, this had gone on longer than Primrose would have expected, though that wasn’t something she was going to complain about. If anything she was worried that she was being burdensome, and that Ophilia would have preferred to go to sleep long ago. But Ophilia still seemed as happy as ever, and Primrose supposed she could be blunt enough that she would say as much if she wanted her rest or her privacy. Finally, though, as Ophilia reached the end of another passage, she paused for a moment, lifting her eyes from her book looking towards Primrose instead.

“Are you sure I’m not boring you?” she asked, and Primrose couldn’t help but find some amusement in the fact that they were both, apparently, worried about similar things.

“Not in the slightest,” Primrose replied. “I’m finding it interesting, really.” Even then Ophilia hesitated for a moment, glancing at the book in her lap, then at the fire, and that caught Primrose’s attention. “Is something the matter?” she asked.

“Even if that’s the case,” Ophilia replied, “even the most interesting things in the world can grow dull after enough time. I wouldn’t want to keep you stuck here if you would rather be getting to sleep.”

“You worry too much,” Primrose said, and Ophilia scrunched her face up into a pout in response to that, though Primrose simply laughed at her expression. “If I’m being entirely honest with you, it’s not just that it’s interesting. It’s… Comforting as well, I suppose.”

“Comforting?” Ophilia repeated, tilting her head to the side slightly as she asked the question. “How so?” That time it was Primrose who paused, and she avoided quite meeting Ophilia’s gaze, giving the question some thought before she answered.

“I’m sure it comes as no surprise for me to say… I haven’t lived the best life,” Primrose began, and there was a weight to those words that made Ophilia’s face sink into a sympathetic frown, even though Primrose herself was handling it well enough. “There are times when it’s gotten so bleak as to feel hopeless, when I’ve started to think that the world itself is a cruel and unfair place with no rhyme or reason to it, or worse yet that there _is_ some sort of greater force at work, and it has it out for me specifically. And yet when I sit here by the fire with you, and I listen to these stories and teachings that you’ve got in that book of yours…” Primrose trailed off there for a moment, choosing her next words carefully, not wanting to offend Ophilia with what she was going to say.

“I still don’t know that I _believe_ in it, at least in the same sense that you do,” she admitted. “But even if I don’t believe it in the literal sense… There’s still something comforting about it,” she went on. “There’s something reassuring about the lessons, the teachings, about everything they espouse. The idea that there might be something bigger than any of us, making sure we’re on the right path, the idea that any hardship is actually just a stepping stone to some good we can’t yet see, the idea that every event that befalls us, even the bad ones, happens for a particular reason… It’s more comforting to let myself think that than to believe the world is a cold, merciless place that doesn’t care about us in the slightest, even if only temporarily.”

As Primrose finished speaking a stillness settled in between them, and she was still keeping her eyes off to the side ever so slightly, still not looking back at Ophilia directly. She felt a nervousness now, worrying that she might have misspoken, and in hindsight all her talk about not believing in the religion that Ophilia followed so faithfully felt like it might have been better kept to herself. Hopefully she hadn’t caused offense.

“Give me your hands.” Ophilia spoke those words so suddenly they startled Primrose, and with a definitive tone that Primrose wasn’t used to hearing out of her. What surprised her more than any of that, though, was that Ophilia didn’t wait for an answer. She reached out without another word to take Primrose’s hands and clasp them between her own, and then she lowered her head and shut her eyes. The next moment passed in silence, with Primrose waiting for an explanation, though when one didn’t come she spoke up herself.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m praying,” Ophilia replied. “You may not have the same faith in the Spirits of the Sacred Flame as I do, but I believe in their blessing nonetheless, and I would be remiss if I didn’t do this for you.” Some part of Primrose wanted to object, to affirm Ophilia’s belief that, no matter how much she might have enjoyed listening to those stories, she didn’t truly believe in anything they said, but before she vocalized any of that she stopped to ask herself what end it would serve. Clearly Ophilia believed strongly, even if Primrose herself didn’t, and if saying these prayers helped to put Ophilia’s mind at ease, who was she to take that away from her? So instead Primrose bit her tongue, letting another moment pass in silence before she spoke once more.

“What, precisely, are you praying for?” she asked, and Ophilia answered without raising her head or opening her eyes.

“I’m praying for them to grant you their protection, and their good fortune,” she replied. “I know the life you’ve lived up until now has been fraught with hardship and misfortune, and I can only imagine the pain you must have endured to make it as far as you have. So I’m asking the spirits to show you their kindness, to watch over you, to ensure good things come to you and make the path you walk from here on out an easier one.” At that point Primrose couldn’t hold herself back entirely, a bit of soft laughter escaping her as she shook her head.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” she said, “but I think your prayer’s come just a little too late.” The moment Ophilia heard that her head suddenly lifted again, and her eyes opened back up wide, and there was an obvious displeasure behind them. Her mouth twisted down into a frown that was more endearing than fearsome, her grip on Primrose’s hands tightening ever so slightly.

“You mustn’t think that way!” she protested. “I know your life has been a hard one, and I know that during times of trouble it can be easy to think that more darkness is all that lays ahead of you, but you cannot let yourself lose hope like that. You have to let yourself believe that-”

“You misunderstand me,” Primrose interrupted, causing Ophilia to pause, wide-eyed, halfway through her sentence. Primrose smiled back at Ophilia, a coy, subtle smile, only barely tugging at the corners of her lips, and then she looked past Ophilia to the rest of the camp: to the smoldering embers of the fire burning away beside them, to Tressa and H’aanit slumbering peacefully on their sleeping bags, to Olberic and Therion and Alfyn and Cyrus laid out on the ground even further past them. And then she looked back to Ophilia again, towards the cleric’s hands still clasped around her own, to the pages of scripture Ophilia had spent the past hour reading from just to entertain her, and her smile grew a bit wider, a bit more sincere.

“For many years my life was difficult, true,” Primrose went on. “But look around us now. I’ve had the good fortune to find companions I can trust, and for those companions to turn to friends who deeply and genuinely care for me. I’ve been lucky enough to look down the lonely path I’ve walked for so long, and to find that path lined by the faces of those who would pick me up and help me walk further than I ever could have alone. I’ve been blessed enough to find you, a woman who would bother the very gods just to make a request for something as trivial as my own happiness. Taking stock of all the blessings I’ve already been given… If I were to ask the spirits for anything more now, I would fear they would just think me greedy.”

As Primrose finished speaking and looked Ophilia in the eyes again she saw Ophilia staring back at her, and as another moment passed she realized that Ophilia’s eyes were tearing up, already threatening to spill over and run down her cheeks. Her entire face was scrunched up, in fact, looking like she was barely holding herself back from breaking down and bawling incoherently, and Primrose was just about to start offering hasty apologies for whatever it was she had said that had upset Ophilia so before Ophilia let go of her hands, only to practically throw herself forward and wrap her arms around Primrose, pulling her into a tight hug that probably would have been crushing, had Ophilia had any upper body strength to speak of.

“You’re not greedy,” Ophilia whispered, and Primrose could tell that she was still only barely holding herself back from crying as she spoke. “You deserve all the world and more, and I’ll call on whatever spirits or gods I must to ensure you get it. And if those gods still refuse then I’ll face them down myself until I’ll make them listen.” Primrose laughed softly at that, and she reached her arms up, wrapping them around Ophilia and rubbing gently at her back- she didn’t quite know how she was the one who had ended up comforting Ophilia in this situation, but she didn’t mind.

“The daughter of the archbishop shouldn’t be speaking that way, you know,” she chided. “It’s blasphemous.”

“I don’t care,” Ophilia replied, pushing her face into Primrose’s shoulder, words slightly muffled as she spoke. “For you, it’s worth it.”

“Very well,” Primrose said, and she couldn’t stop her mouth from creeping up into a genuine smile once more when she heard that. “I suppose I can make sure this stays between us.”


End file.
